Thank You for visiting Lab Testing Matters. Please let us know if you have any feedback about the design or content of our site. If you’d like to submit a story or article for posting to the site please go here to Submit Your Story.

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/bradj/public_html/wp-content/plugins/visual-form-builder/public/class-form-display.php on line 241

Healthcare needs to be safe, effective, efficient, timely, patient-centered and equitable. Each of these attributes is one of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Quality Aims, and each describes one component...

It has been fifteen years since the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published To Err is Human1 and Crossing the Quality Chasm2 alerting healthcare professionals and consumers that patients were unintentionally...

Lab Testing Matters because…

In addition to all of the insightful reasons already stated, lab testing matters because the results obtained are often instrumental in furthering medical research toward more effective prevention, treatment and cures for diseases, and metabolic disorders.

I work in a small critical access hospital in rural NW Iowa. The providers depend on our lab work in diagnosis and treatment of all our patients. Our lab results often impact whether or not a patient can be treated successfully at our hospital or should be transferred to a large medical facility. Whether you are large or small, lab results need to be spot on and your quality control excellent. We matter.

Without us to run all these tests on patients, the doctors would never know how to cure them. Especially in microbiology, you need a tech that can think outside the box a lot of the time. A Sherlock Holmes.

I remember one case where a patient had complaints that were confusing to the doctor and he (the patient) was sent to the lab. We performed liver function tests and renal fuction tests. The results revealed the the renal function tests were out of range and so the doctor had a clearer picture of what was going on with the patient. So what do I learn from this? Well, i could say that, my proffesion saved the day. Both for the troubled patient and the confused doctor!

Every tube / specimen is a patient with a suspected illness in need of a diagnosis and appropriate course of treatment. Without our adept analytical and interpretive skills, the clinical physician would be at a loss in providing the appropriate care and course of treatment. It is even more critical as in my case where you’re one of only two skilled personnel in respect to certain diagnostic procedures (Flow Cytometry for the immunophenotyping of leukemia’s).